August 7, 2024 Show with Dr. Bradley G. Green & Special Co-Host Levi Secord on “Political Engagement in Light of the Lordship of Christ” (Part 2)

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And I'm so delighted to have returning to the program as my special co -host today,

Levi Secord, and he is the founding pastor of Christ Bible Church in Roseville, Minnesota, and we are going to be joined by my guest today, a first -time guest,

Dr. Bradley G. Green, professor of theological studies at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

He's an author, board member at American Friends of Tyndale House, Cambridge, senior contributor for the

Imaginative Conservative, a writer -in -residence at Tyndale House, Cambridge, and senior fellow at Newton House, Oxford, England.

And today we are going to be addressing part two of a series of interviews we began last week,

Political Engagement in Light of the Lordship of Christ, and we'll also be announcing the upcoming conference featuring

Dr. Green and other speakers this September at Christ Bible Church in Roseville, Minnesota.

Well first of all, let me welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Levi Secord, and am

I pronouncing your name right? I remember last time I mispronounced it. No, you've got it right.

Thank you for having me. It's great to have you back. And why don't you remind our listeners something about Christ Bible Church in Roseville, Minnesota.

We are a church that started in February of 2021. We exist to glorify

God by bringing all of Christ into all of life. This conference is an extension of touching an area of life that a lot of people think the church should never touch.

We don't think that way, and so we've been really blessed by the

Lord over these last three and a half or so years. A growing congregation, not just numerically, but growing in the

Lord and love for one another. And this is a church that believes, professes, and proclaims the doctrines of sovereign grace?

Correct. And the website for those of you who are either living in or near Roseville, Minnesota, or you have family, friends, and loved ones in or near Roseville, or you're passing through that area, the website is

ChristBible .net, ChristBible .net. And as I mentioned, we are welcoming for the very first time as our guest today,

Dr. Bradley G. Green, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the first time,

Brother Green. Thank you, Chris. I'm happy to be here and look forward to this time talking together.

And I'm thrilled to have you on the show, and if you could, we have a tradition, as I already told you before the show, when we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, including the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them, and I'd love to hear your story.

Well, sure. Well, it's an honor to share, and good to be here with Levi and you, Chris. So I was raised in Anchorage, Alaska.

My parents were Texans who met and married and raised a family in Alaska. I was born in 65, so I was born,

Alaska had only been a state since 1959, so it was a wonderful place, wonderful childhood.

My parents had both been raised in church. The cultural context was fairly secular.

It was a different day. I'm 58, so it was a different day in Alaska, kind of a rugged frontier place.

And I was raised Lutheran until I was 12, and then started going to a

Baptist church with a friend of mine, and really heard the gospel to my memory for the first time in that context as a 12 -year -old boy.

We went to the Lutheran church. The Lord had mercy on my family in those months, years, whether my parents came to faith or had a renewal of faith is hard to say.

But we started going to the Baptist church, heard the gospel, and realized

I indeed was not converted, was not saved. And I was kind of told later to say

I invited Jesus into my heart, and I don't deny that that happened, but as I've reflected back on it now, many years later, it's more or less

I just wanted to run into the arms of Jesus, and I kind of more ran down the aisle rather than walked down the aisle, and was gloriously converted, gloriously saved.

Not a lot of great discipleship in those teen years, but the

Lord was very good to me, and over time developed a deeper hunger for the

Bible and for theological literature. But I was gloriously saved as a 12 -year -old boy in Anchorage, Alaska, and very thankful, brother.

Great. Well, praise God for that. And we're going to have you momentarily address something in further detail that we only touched upon last time when we had

Dr. Stephen Wellam on the program, and we'd like you to perhaps put a magnifying glass over it, and that would be

Two Kingdom Theology. But before we do that, if you could, Pastor Levi, remind our listeners or inform them for the first time, if they did not hear last week's show, inform them in summary form about the

Till Kingdom Come conference, Political Engagement in the Light of the Lordship of Christ, and what your purpose is for this conference, and even what compelled you to arrange this conference.

Yeah, so the conference is September 20th through 21st, so Friday evening after work, and then most of the day

Saturday. It's called Till Kingdom Come, Political Engagement in the

Light of the Lordship of Christ. And so, the heart behind this is to speak distinctively as Baptists who have

Reformed convictions. Our speakers all have some connection to the Christ overall ministry, and so there's going to be a little bit of progressive covenantalism, which

Steve spoke about last time. And so, our hope here is to speak distinctively as Christians with those convictions as to how we can apply the

Christian faith and worldview to this area of life. We would largely all be in broad agreement with the works of people like Francis Schaeffer and this totalizing view of Christian life and engagement and thinking through things, and I think that's been lacking in this discussion.

We've had a lot of Presbyterians talk. We've had a lot of Baptists talk who sound like Presbyterians, and then we've had a lot of Baptists talk who sound like a light version of secularism.

I'm hoping we are going to strike a more distinct tone in all of this. Great. And by the way, folks, you might want to mark on your calendars that we're going to continue this conversation for Part 3 of Till Kingdom Come, Political Engagement in the

Light of the Lordship of Christ, next Wednesday, when our guest will be

Ardell Caneday, and he is on the leadership staff at Christ Bible Church, correct?

Yes. Yes, he is our head elder, our chair of the elder team. So please mark that down on your calendars, which will be

Wednesday, the 14th of August.

And so, as I just mentioned, if you could, Dr. Green, if you could tell us more about Two -Kingdom

Theology, and let me also start with a caveat. I hope that my friends who espouse

Two -Kingdom Theology will not let your anger hearing your theological views critiqued,

I hope you don't let your anger cloud the way you are hearing what we're saying today.

Sometimes that happens, we don't even listen anymore to somebody speaking when we know they are critiquing or opposing something that we believe, and we're not trying to broad brush or vilify or claim as heretics anyone who espouses

Two -Kingdom Theology. I have very dear friends and brothers in Christ that I have known for quite a while, and whom

I have learned much from and have been edified by over the years.

I just have my own disagreements in that area. But if you could tell us about Two -Kingdom

Theology and why it is relevant to our conversation today. Well, thanks,

Chris. Yeah, I echo your kind, brotherly, pastoral word. I don't want to be a contrarian, but in the one sense,

I'd say we all have to believe in two kingdoms. So we're talking about a tendency in theology or a certain way to piece things together in terms of Christianity and politics.

Let me back up a bit. Of course, there's two kingdoms, there's the church and the world. And that's a part of the

Bible, and it's a part of, simply speaking, I'm speaking as a Protestant, a Reformed Protestant, a

Baptist. It is a part of our tradition to speak of the church and the world.

And you don't want to kind of radically sequester those two, but neither do you want to conflate them as if there's no distinction.

I live in the South and happy to be a Southerner. We can sometimes walk down the street and call everyone brother if we're not careful.

Then you realize, well, maybe I should think twice about that. That person may or may not be a brother in Christ, but there can be kind of a warm fuzziness about if you try to conflate kingdom and the king of the church and the king of the world.

So there are two kingdoms in a most basic sense. What I want to unpack in my talks, and I won't be acerbic and I don't tend to be snarky, is to try to just, you know, maybe half the time walk through.

I'll try to be overly fair to David Van Drunen, will be the person

I'm engaged. I've met Professor Van Drunen, he's very gracious and I have no personal animus.

But the key idea, and I'll keep this short, then you can jump in, Chris, is that my concern with two kingdoms is that at its best, it's making sense of the

Bible. At its worst, it is subtly sequestering,

I think, all of biblical revelation from thinking about all of reality.

So in one sense, all I want to try to say in my talk is, is all of scripture should be applied to all of life and that takes time to work that out.

And you have to be careful about it and you have to understand how the covenants fit together and all the rest. My interest in or concern for two kingdoms is it makes this move where it says, yes,

God creates the world and yes, there's Adam and Adam is given the dominion mandate.

Two kingdoms is interesting. It where most of us, many of us who were formed have historically said the dominion mandate kind of continues on to all of us.

David Vandrunen is very interesting. He kind of sees the dominion mandate, the original covenant with Adam to really kind of come to an end with Adam.

And so that you don't necessarily have that dominion mandate persist through history, as I would tend to say it does.

Dr. Vandrunen will then speak about how the Noahic law has universal meaning for all cultures at all times.

And I would agree. But then is much more nervous about the Mosaic law, understandably.

And so you, you kind of, you have this tendency, I think, in at least two kingdoms theologies

I've read and studied for a number of years now, is a nervous tendency about applying all the

Bible to all of life. And these two kingdoms, I think, are too sequestered in at least much of the two kingdoms, theology and statecraft that I, that I read.

So let me stop there. So it's not to drone on too long. And we can try to ask some questions.

What would, how would someone like Vandrunen handle, for example, Psalm chapter eight, written after the dominion mandate, clearly references back to the dominion mandate being in effect today.

New Testament clearly picks that up as being hammered out through Christ too. But, but how would they, how would they deal with, with that?

It's a great question. And I'll need to look into that more. I think what Vandrunen is wanting to do is, and there's a whole 10,

I won't name names here. I'm not trying to name names or castigate, but there's a tendency to be very suspicious of worldview talk of Christ, the

Lord of the world in terms of. Christians leading

Christians, having Christian education, trying to think Christianly about the academic disciplines.

There's a tendency to be very nervous about that whole realm that I've kind of cut my teeth in and been a part of for decades.

So Psalm eight may certainly have meaning for the contemporary Christian, but as Vandrunen unpacks this, he's very nervous about, the covenant, whatever you want to call the

Adamic covenant about that dominion, that covenant is the covenant of works, that covenant failed.

And so that those teachings as covenant no longer hold, if that makes sense.

How would this differ than a more classic Protestant first wave, second wave

Protestant two kingdom view? Yeah, I think Vandrunen, Vandrunen is trying to advance the, um, his understanding of two or his, his, he's trying to advance and work out corrections of two kingdoms.

I think he probably has the most difficulties with Calvin because Calvin is quite clear if we, if we think of Calvin as the first generation, you know, obviously 1500s, he lived 1509 to 1564 for Calvin, you do have a separation of church and state as institutions, but the state, the state is nonetheless accountable to, to God.

And, and, um, now we may not want to go as far as Calvin would, you know.

Um, but in Calvin, the state is accountable to God and thus the scriptures have something very clear to say about the state and Calvin even says in the fourth book of the institutes,

I think you may be wrong here, but that the role of the politician is like one of the most highest callings you can have in this world, uh, because you are a, um, you are one who answers to God.

I think that is true. Uh, and you are a minister of God as you still find in many

European countries and South American countries. We use the term secretary, Europe, we use the term minister of culture, minister of finance, minister of this, which is clearly a holdover from their, their

Christian, their Christian path. So I think the most difficult thing for Vandrunen I would think would be

Calvin himself is much less skittish about the civil magistrate being accountable to God.

And then we might say indirectly the scriptures, um, where Vandrunen is going to advance a more robust understanding of natural law and not that you can't find elements of that in Calvin, but it's certainly not as developed in Calvin as it is in someone like Vandrunen.

I think it's helpful here to also note that the early, cause I think this is something that goes around in Baptist circles all the time, the early

Baptists like John Gill also were very much a view of that the state was a minister of God and had some religious obligations.

Yeah. And I read it as somebody who's more sympathetic with that. And I, I think someone like Gil, I think went too far, but I often hear,

I think the, the false claim that to be a Baptist, you can't believe in any of that.

And it's like, well, the early Baptists were diverse on this. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair to say.

That's fair to say. Yeah. So go ahead, Chris. No, no, you can go ahead.

I just wanted to have something clarified, but go ahead before you forget your thought. No, no.

I was just going to say Vandrunen has written a lot. So he's, he's worthy of, of close study. Um, the most easy way into him is an older popular book called living in God's work in, in living in God's two kingdoms.

He's written some massive beast of books. Um, and he's, he, he's a true scholar, but he has written a popular level book called living in God's kingdom, which is either 2010 or 14,

I'm forgetting the year now it's been, it's been a while. Um, uh, 2010, uh,

I was just going to mention that for those who want to read more. Well, I was just curious, uh, is there a connection, uh, with the two kingdom theology and Augustine's two cities of God?

And if there is a connection, is it a distortion of that? The, you mentioned, you mentioned

John Calvin before who upheld Augustine as one of his great heroes of the church. So, yes.

Um, that's a great question, Chris. Yeah. I think there is a, there is a connection, Augustine. Um, of course, when he wrote the city of God after the

Visigoths had invaded Rome and for 10 and he, he, he, um, he has this understanding and he really tells the whole story of the world in a sense in the city of God.

I mean, it's not exhaustive obviously, but he's trying to offer a way of thinking about history and the life of the church and what, what has happened in history.

And so the two kingdoms are the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world.

And that'd be one way of speaking about two kingdoms. Now, Augustine's an interesting one.

Augustine can, and how I will say this, when Augustine speaks, Chris, the kingdom of, of God and the kingdom of man, at times that simply means

Christians and non -Christians at times, it seems to mean, um, more or less spiritual concerns, more or less mundane, secular earthy concerns.

So he's, he's flexible. In his use of the terms, but, but he, he sees both of those running throughout history, um, and he's not going to see necessarily the, um, the church overtaking the kingdom of man or the kingdom of God overtaking the kingdom of man.

They kind of grow throughout history. Um, and then at the end of the judgment, those who persisted unbelief or lost forever and the kingdom of God, uh, flourishes in its, its final fullest sense.

Um, so yes, I think you, you do have something like a two kingdoms view there in, um, in Augustine.

It's a different day though. It's a different day. Um, because he probably, well, this is actually a debate in Augustine scholarship.

Um, some want to say that Augustine was a proto, I won't use the term

Christian nationalist, but a proto let's have a Christian society as a whole and others said that's, you might, um, well, a number of folks we could mentioned, uh, um, uh, their

John Milbank for one. Uh, on the other side, people like Robert Marcus would say, uh, no, there was, there was kind of a room for the secular in Augustine's thinking.

And then maybe something to that. Um, so Augustine is debatable there, but there's no doubt he had a notion of two kingdoms.

But it's not quite what Calvin had. I don't think it's quite what Benjamin is doing either.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. And if you have a question for Dr.

Bradley green, our email address is chrisorensen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence.

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Go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron radio. And I am now back with Dr.

Bradley Green and also my cohost, Pastor Levi Secord.

And we are discussing what I believe is a very important topic that seems to be increasingly more important the older I get, political engagement in light of the

Lordship of Christ. This is part two of a three part series we are conducting here.

The next part, part three will be next Wednesday, a featuring a

Dr. Ardell Kane Day, and we are promoting an event that is being held, a conference featuring

Dr. Green and other speakers at the Christ Bible Church in Roseville, Minnesota.

And by the way, before I forget to mention this, you should mark your calendars down for Tuesday, the 27th of August, because we have my cohost today,

Pastor Levi Secord switching hats, as it were, where he will be my guest.

And he's going to be talking about the newly announced vice presidential candidate of Kamala Harris, Tim Walls.

And if you could perhaps just whet the appetite of our listeners for this conversation that we'll be having on the 27th of August, Pastor Levi.

Oh, boy, where do I start with that one? I had an article for World Opinions, World Magazine Online published this morning on the my thesis is how

Governor Walls has turned Minnesota into the California of the Midwest. I've lived under his leadership now for six years, and I know lots of individuals who have fled the state.

I know many more who are considering it. And he's a he's a cheap clone of Gavin Newsom.

The idea that he's being pushed right now as an everyday Midwestern or moderate is laughable to anybody who's followed his political career.

OK, well, mark down your calendars Tuesday, August 27th, same time, same channel.

And we will have Pastor Levi Secord, a Minnesota resident and pastor highlighting the disturbing news of Tim Walls being the the new vice presidential candidate running alongside

Kamala Harris. But in some ways is extraordinarily wonderful news for many conservatives because they believe that that may be the death knell to Kamala Harris's presidential campaign.

It's a really odd thing to see, Chris. Both the left and the right are happy.

She picked Tim Walls. I don't know what to make of that. Yes. Well, at least the extreme left are happy about it.

I'm not sure how privately how your run of the mill mainstream liberal next door views this, if they really know anything about Tim Walls.

But as I have said recently in social media, conservatives have really got to stop calling our political opponents liberals because they're not liberals.

They're totalitarian leftists. And not everybody who's a liberal by nature or by political views would be necessarily a leftist and a

Marxist. So I'm really eager to hear what you have to say next or I'm sorry, not next

Tuesday, but Tuesday, the 27th of August. Well, we have a listener in Findlay, Ohio.

Her name is Cindy, and she has a question. Is Two Kingdom Theology referring to the people who think we should stay out of politics and issues regarding our society and just focus solely on the gospel,

Dr. Green? Yeah, well, thanks, Cindy. It's a great question. I think if you know, when

I answer these kinds of things, I like to think of if Professor Van Druin and again,

I have no hostility to him at all were next to me, what would you say? I think he would he would they would want to say, no, we we wouldn't quite say it that way.

Now, your question is pretty close, though. I think the way you state it is there's an emphasis on the church is about the gospel construed in as a path to salvation, as a way to become holy, a way to offer

God his do his worth, worship him. And so that's that's the that's the role of the church.

Now, I think a thoughtful two kings person would be happy to say that the more the gospel goes forth in a culture, the more people come to faith as a leavening influence on the culture, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But your question, I think essentially gets gets at the heart of it is there's a skittishness and a nervousness to go out there in the public square and make the case and to encourage people to vote a certain way and to think about the the future of your city, your country.

And I think in fairness to the two kings and folks, they would say since the church is the church and the state or civil government isn't, the civil government should honor and give the church its room and not mess in its affairs.

I think we can be hope we can be we can agree with that, no doubt. We don't want the governor of Minnesota or Tennessee, you know, handing out required sermon topics for every

Baptist church in Tennessee. Obviously, you can multiply bad examples. So that would be the positive side or something we would agree with our two kingdoms friends on.

But you're close. I think you're very close. And is there's a let the church be the church and let the let the state be the state that civil government, the civil government, that the difficulty is, is the one that always you always come to these questions is,

OK, so what does the state do? Right. What if what if someone says, I think like it is the case in Germany today, it's bad for the

Commonwealth, the German government will say to allow people to homeschool. Right.

It's bad for the German culture. It's bad for the German well -being. And so we really can't allow homeschool.

Right. So what what kind of parades is secularism is certainly an attempt to keep

Christians in Germany from exercising their biblical mandate to raise children in the nurtured admonition of the

Lord. So I think. But, yeah, your question is well put, Cindy. I think you're you're on to it there.

One thing I think. Go ahead. I'm sorry. We have with what we have is, I think, the misunderstanding of if we don't do that, then we have to have some sort of melding of the church and state.

And people don't want that. And as a Baptist, I don't I don't particularly want that either. This is why Calvin's Calvin's more chastened to kingdoms, which is really picked up and developed by people like Abraham Kuyper, where he coins the term sphere.

Sovereignty is much more helpful because we recognize that God himself has established these different spheres in life.

And in that he's put governing structures. So like the servant of the state is the servant of God, the deacon of God, Romans 13.

And you also have servants or ministers of God in the church. And you have that in the family. And there's these orders that God has placed in their distinct spheres of governing authority.

But God is at the head of all of them through Christ. And I think that prevents us from getting to what you said a little bit earlier of of the more radical two kingdoms is that it's almost like God doesn't have authority over that right now in many ways.

And I personally don't find any justification for that. When you read your

New Testament, well, like the resurrected Lord says, I have all authority in heaven and earth right now.

And because I have that right now, you can go to the whole world. And then Paul reiterates that in Colossians 1, 15 through 20, which many people believe to be an early confession of the church, that Christ is preeminent over everything.

He has authority over everything seen and unseen, like the warp and wolf of the New Testament is the universal authority of Christ.

Now, is there some already not yet tension there? Yes, we have to keep that. It can't be all already or all not yet.

Right. We have two different extremes that go there. Yeah, well stated, well stated. And many people, it's obvious, perhaps especially liberals and leftists, they misunderstand not only

Thomas Jefferson's assurance to Baptists in Rhode Island that there would be a separation of church and state, which is not constitutional.

The constitution protection of the church is that there will be no establishing of a religion.

But both of those things, were they not intended to protect the church from the government and not the reverse?

It seems that whenever you hear a leftist crying out against a conservative individual, whether it's a politician or just people in general, they will start crying out separation of church and state, separation of church and state.

And they're thinking of it in the reverse, aren't they? The reverse of what it is intended or was intended that we in the church are to be protected from the government.

Am I right? Yes, I think that's essentially right. I'd also say this sometimes forgotten even by conservatives is the

First Amendment is a prohibition on Congress, not on states, not on counties, not on cities, et cetera.

So the first as far as the First Amendment language, it is Congress shall not.

So this is why you had in our early days of the US, of course, and the colonies is you did have certain religious groups or churches having a certain certain sway in various state governments and the like.

But there's a deeper issue here, Chris, that at some point I want us to talk about is, is there's a shell game that happens,

I think, in these discussions. Think of your county fair or something where, you know, shell game, which which shells the ball under.

You never win. Why do you never win? You're being suckers here. So I think when someone says, yes, separation of church and state, they can sometimes meet it in the sense that you religious folks are doing religion.

We are just doing what's rational and true and scientific, et cetera.

And I think Christians have to wake up and realize every. Every civil government, every social policy, every law is always the instantiation of some ultimate conviction, which if you scratch long enough is going to be religious in some fundamental sense.

And that's a difficult truth to wrap your mind around. And once you wrap your mind around, it is kind of like, you know, wow, your eyes are open.

And so so, again, in thinking of Germany for a second, with Germany's hostility to homeschooling, it's done in the name of secular enlightenment liberalism.

But what it is, in effect, it is an anti -Christian worldview being worked out by that particular government, which is more than ironic, given

Germany's history. Right. So I think state schools do last century.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean, so every law is always the working out of some conviction, which in some way is religiously rooted.

And that's that's an I think is an inescapable reality, which helps you, I think, to see things more clearly.

Yes, that's Schaefer's point that if there is no God above the state, the state becomes a god.

Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. I was just going to say the leftists are speaking falsely when they say they are not importing a religion into how we are governed.

They just don't call it. They just don't call it that. That's right. Because everything they are demanding and everything that they've already established, much to our dismay, has to do with their understanding of morality.

They think it is immoral for children who think they are of an opposite gender to prevent them from pursuing that.

That is immoral for us to say, no, children think as children think.

And they are not prepared to make decisions that are life altering, especially when we view those decisions and actions as satanic.

And so every and even things that we would even agree upon as those who are conservative, more to the right, the protection of individuals from persecution on the virtue of the color of our skin and things like that.

Yes. We agree with the left on that, but that's a moral issue. So, go ahead.

No, I thought you were done. No, it's very well said. So, we as Christians, and yes,

I think the three of us here in the studio are more or less conservative. We should take the high ground and say, hey, we're all for justice.

We're all for truth. We're all for beauty. We're all for protecting the innocent and the widow and the orphan.

Now, what the role of the state is in that, we can debate that, etc. But at least we have to, particularly with, you're mentioning the trans surgeries.

I mean, I don't know if you know the feminist Camille Paglia. Camille Paglia is a fascinating feminist, does not confess

Christ as Lord. At least last time I saw her, she didn't. And writes kind of radical literary theory, although she does believe in meaning, very interestingly, in words and all this.

But a fascinating figure. So, she had a conference and she's asked by somebody, what do you think about the people who are opposed to trans rights?

And Camille Paglia, you find this clip, Camille Paglia goes on about a six -minute rant saying, why are we not protecting children from this evil?

So, here is a bisexual, liberal, probably atheist, agnostic of her own admission, standing up for children, having their various aspects of their body removed.

So, you have these very odd moments where a secular radical stands up and says, this is, this is criminal behavior against children.

And so, all that is to say, as Christians, we should be the ones, you know, talking the most about justice and what is right and the role of civil government and how do you protect people from harm.

Anyway, I'll get off my own rant there. But no, by the way, you never have to view the necessity to cut your answer short.

I love thorough, detailed answers. So, you don't have to worry about that. But it is, go ahead.

Yeah, let me go on then, since you gave me the microphone. So, here's a book I'd recommend. Tom Holland's book,

Dominion. It's a very interesting, Tom Holland, a British historian, decided to write a one -volume church history.

And at the time, Tom Holland was - He's an atheist, too. Yeah, I assume he still is, at least he was, yeah.

And Tom Holland writes this history. And then he begins doing interviews about this and says, I was amazed as I wrote a one -volume church history.

What I discovered was the civilizing influence and how much wickedness and oppression and treatment of women and treatment of children was alleviated as the gospel took root in the world in the first century as it began to expand.

So, we need to kind of hop on to those kind of insights and make them our own.

This is our stuff, the Christian faith. But here's Tom Holland, something of a secular atheist, if you say, historian.

That's what he says in the book. He says he's, in essence, a cultural Christian, doesn't believe a word of it.

He doesn't believe a word of the faith. He seems to have publicly softened on that. Yeah, and we can pray for him, but it's the same thing with Richard Dawkins recently.

Richard Dawkins, one of the great horsemen of the apocalypse as far as the new atheist, and who now comes out and says, hey,

I kind of like traditional sexuality. And he began to call, at least he has called himself a cultural

Christian. Wow. Because he's there in England, seeing it collapse around him as he moves in.

I don't know if he's 80 yet. He's an older man, obviously. Seeing his world collapse around him.

And he's happy to be called a cultural Christian. And we have to go to our midway break. We have to go to our midway break right now.

We could pick up where you left off there on Richard Dawkins. And if anybody wants to submit a question, it's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Now, if you have any questions for my guest today, Dr. Bradley Green, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And right before the break, Dr. Green, you were talking about Richard Dawkins being an atheist, and even he had a bold proclamation, which should not even be considered something that would be a bold proclamation, but in our day and age it is, to dare say that you believe in heterosexuality as your preferred way of expressing yourself in that way.

Yeah. And it reminds me also of when I was arranging a debate years ago,

I had actually gotten an approval, an acceptance to my invitation to debate my friend

Dr. James R. White years ago. I got an acceptance to my invitation by Christopher Hitchens.

And the debate was scheduled to be on the theme, The New Testament is

Evil, and Christopher Hitchens was obviously affirming that thesis and James White was denying it.

Sadly, Christopher Hitchens had to back out because he developed esophageal cancer, which eventually took his life.

We had David Silverman fill in for him. David Silverman said that he wanted to debate

James again on the theme, Is Jesus Christ a myth or historical figure?

And it's interesting that when he could not or would not participate in that debate that he himself challenged me to arrange the next year,

I started contacting the four horsemen of the apocalypse, as they're known as.

And the one that I clearly remember having a conversation with,

Daniel Dennett, who just passed away, interestingly enough. One can only hope that he repented before leaving this planet.

He just passed away in April. But Daniel Dennett, when I said, David Silverman can't participate in the debate

I'm trying to arrange on whether or not Jesus Christ was a true figure from history.

And Daniel Dennett said, well, I'm not going to debate that. No atheist worth his soul defends that Jesus Christ was a myth.

We know that he was a historical figure. We just don't believe he was

God. Right. But anyway, did you have anything further that you wanted to say about Dawkins?

Oh, no, just it's we live in interesting days where, you know, it's a number of folks have said this.

It's good that we're not always consistent. Cornelius Vantill like to point this out with unbelieving thought, particularly that people never people never work out.

Well, never. People generally do not work out consistently all the entailments of their basic philosophical worldview or their way of thinking.

And it's probably good that people don't. And it's just an interesting moment where a secular historian like Tom Holland can point to the the world changing for the good nature of the

Christian faith, where someone like Dawkins, who spent much of his career.

Arguing against the God of Scripture can say, I, I kind of like cultural

Christianity, and so it's a I find those encouraging and interesting. And it's almost like the plates under our feet are shifting as almost every day as these kind of things come out.

So I think, sadly, what's happened is. The church and a lot of leadership in the church has fallen prey to the critical theory rewriting of Western history, and we have these these non -Christians going back and looking at the record like Holland.

And Dawkins, and I think we're even seeing people like Elon Musk and others are coming to this conclusion to that actually

Christianity has indisputably been a positive, in fact, impact on the world.

And if we're putting it into some of our parlance here with Holland's book, Holland's describing how the

West was Christianized. So we've had some discussion about whether or not the Christianization of society or country or nation is a good thing.

In Holland's cases, yes, it's been a dimension or demonstrably good thing, and there's lots of resources.

Vishal Mangawaldi is written on this, Stephen Smith and his book, Pagans and Christian in the

City, Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac. He lays this out like the moral practices of Rome are absolutely abhorrent, and the moral practices of paganism around the world, including our ancestors in northern

Europe, abhorrent. Wherever Christianity went, things got better. Maybe we could link that to our conference.

Yeah, one of the things we might forget is even the right to call for liberty or to call for legal protection or to make the case for every person having a high value in some way, shape or form.

You might have versions of those before the Christian faith, but they certainly get rooted and strengthened and maybe discovered once the

Christian faith begins to influence Western culture, whether it's the honoring of the unborn, whether it's the honoring of the aged, whether it is going to bat for people who are different than you, whether racially or whatever.

The Christian faith has time and time again had this wonderful influence on cultures.

When we talk about politics, there's a great book by Douglas Kelly called

The Emergence of Liberty, and he works out how liberty flourished.

He picked five different countries or regions going back to the time of the

Reformation, and he works out how the Christian faith produced the notion of liberty.

Now, of course, what you and I are experiencing is then a twisting of the notion of liberty that's kind of reaching back and biting the hand that not just fed them, fed it, but birthed it.

You know, the notion of political liberty in one sense is a Christian reality. And so you and I are watching that a we might say a perversion of a notion of liberty now wanting to engage in the great

Western tradition of parasite or of killing the father, right, of going or the mother going back and devouring the hand that birthed it.

So it's a wild time to be living, but there's a lot of reasons to give thanks for how the

Christian faith produced the very notion of liberty, which is now being corrupted before our very eyes.

OK, we have either Kirsten or Kirsten in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who said it following up on a earlier question that you got from Cindy in Ohio.

I think from what I have experienced, most people involved in two kingdom theology are saying that it is the freedom and liberty and even responsibility of individual

Christians to be involved in the political arena. They just do not want pastors and the church as an institution to do so.

What are your thoughts? That's very good, insightful question, because I can even remember a very well known

Calvinist dispensationalist friend of mine that I was interviewing and I was taken aback.

This is when I was first being introduced to this whole concept that of two kingdom and so on.

And I'm not even saying this person was espousing two kingdom by name. Yeah, but when I told him about a black pastor who was very strongly and vociferously pro life and would be very much involved in ministering to women at the abortion clinics, trying to prevent them from murdering their babies and spreading the truth about the history of Planned Parenthood, which was designed to basically erase the planet

Earth from all non -white people, he said, this guest of mine, this very well known

Calvinist dispensationalist, oh, he shouldn't be doing that if he's a pastor. No, no, no. That is not his realm.

That is not his lane. He should be sticking to the study of the word, the preaching of the word, proclaiming of the word, the edifying of the saints, the shepherding of the saints.

This kind of extracurricular activity is no place for a pastor. And I disagreed with him.

I was actually startled that he took that strong a position. But if you could respond to Kirsten or Kirsten's specific comment.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Kirsten or Kirsten, it's a great question. Yeah. And so thank you for that.

That's a good it's a great point. So I think there's there's a level of that which is exactly right.

I mean, if in the sense that if I'm glad that maybe someone who's got more two kingdom sympathies is still saying, hey, now part of being a citizen is thinking about justice.

Part of being a citizen is is is is calling for just laws.

And so I would I would hope that Christians and pastors in that situation would would say, yes, we love our neighbor by calling for just laws.

We love our neighbor by working to implement just laws and elect just wise leaders, etc.

So it's a man in the first part. Let me may be complicated a bit. Kirsten or Kirsten, which

I know you're exactly your name. What what about when that's that kind, you know, that that 25 year old new

Christian says, hey, thanks, Pastor. So I've got a meeting with the

I've got a meeting with my senator. What do I tell them as a Christian? Well, then the pastor, then you're kind of you got to say something, right?

You know, Jeffrey Stout like to say you can only clear your throat so many times and you got to say something.

And I think you got to say something. And and I think that's where my concern would be.

So praise for the pastors to king of pastors who would say, hey, we're preaching the gospel. Great.

And you go out and be do your thing politically. OK, but what about when Bob or Sally says, hey,

I've got a meeting with the governor? You know, what do I say? Or how about this? What if what if Donald Trump was a

Christian? Not I won't say. But let's say he isn't. Let's say he gets converted and you you bump into him at your local

Starbucks. He says, hey, I've heard leave. I heard, Chris, you're a Christian. I've just been elected president.

Should my Christian faith influence my political leadership at all? And that's kind of when the rubber hits the road, right?

Or let's say it's Biden. Let's say Kamala Harris gets elected and Kamala jump. You know, bumps into Levi Seacourt or Brad Green at Starbucks.

Hey, I've heard you. You write your author and stuff. You got a PhD. I just got converted.

I'm not saying she is. You know, I just got converted. How do I lead? Well, then

I would hope you'd have more to say than natural law, which is the heart of two kingdoms thinkings on political order.

I would hope there'd be something about here's what the Bible teaches about the limitations of the state. Right. Here's what the

Bible teaches about raising your children, the nurture, admission of the Lord. So you might want to think about not promoting legislation which makes

Christian schooling, independent schooling, homeschooling difficult. But what if the president or the senator comes to you and says, how do

I govern? I think then you need to make some recourse to Scripture and not just a natural law.

You can take it even a step further than that, because as Americans, we all have some delegated authority to govern through voting.

This is a representative republic. So every adult sitting in your pews will give an account for how they exercise the authority as they're part of We the

People of self -government. And so ultimately, our presidents, our senators, our congressmen are representatives of us.

We delegate authority to them. And so we have to ask, how do we do that?

And my conviction as a pastor is I am to shepherd my people in all of life. And that includes political involvement in the moral decisions they have to make.

And so I'm sympathetic, like you said, Brad, to I don't want the church ruling in the sphere of the state.

I don't want the church bearing the sword. But the state's job is to bear the sword to execute, as Romans 13 says,

God's justice, God's wrath. The state doesn't get to define that. What is just?

The state doesn't get to define for itself what is God's wrath. So who does that for the state? Where does the state turn?

Well, in a healthy society, the church would speak to this from its sphere to the state saying, this is what justice is.

This is what it's not. And I think we have a long history of Christian leaders throughout the centuries who, when the state steps out of bounds in their role as a minister of God in the church, people like Ambrose of Milan and the massacre in Thessalonica, yes, stand there and say, you can't come to this church until until you repent.

You can't murder people. You can't do that. And so I think we have if you if you're dealing with sphere sovereignty, you recognize there's two different spheres, but they do have things to say to one another.

I like that. Remember, the pastor is a shepherd, like you're saying.

And if you're shepherding people and you're shepherding them to submit all things to the universal lordship of Christ and be renewed in their minds, how can you not include their political responsibilities and voting as a part of how you're trying to help them act like disciples in every sphere of life?

So your point is well made, Levi. Well said. Now, you mentioned that we are in a representative republic, not a democracy, as most people, even on Fox News, constantly repeat.

Even one of my heroes of political commentary, Tucker Carlson, constantly calls it a democracy.

But as members of a representative republic, constitutional republic, do you think that perhaps we as Christians are more under an obligation to be politically involved as opposed to our brethren in Christ in a dictatorship?

Because of Luke 12, 48, to whom much is given, much is required. If we are given this freedom and given the opportunity to make our voice be known and to be passionately and vociferously involved in the political arena when absolutely horrific and satanic things are taking place, like the slaughter of unborn children and the sexual mutilation of children under the guise of transgenderism and on and on we could go, the same -sex marriage and so on, do you think that that text and others would obligate us in more of a strong way than somebody who's in a dictatorship?

That's a great, I wouldn't fight you on that. It's one of Augustine's points when he responds in the cities, to kind of turn it to Augustine for a second.

One of Augustine's arguments in The City of God is, and he's writing it in part because Christians are being accused of, since the

Christian faith is growing in the empire and at Rome, that's why the gods allowed, that's why

Rome fell is they'd abandoned the gods. And part of the criticism of Christians was, you're so concerned about heaven that you don't, you're not concerned about this kingdom.

And Augustine's point is, no, based on Romans 13, Christian citizenship and obligation is a religious duty.

So not just a right to vote, it is a duty to try to love

God and love neighbor by seeing justice, albeit imperfectly and partially, incipiently, have it nonetheless become instantiated in your corner of the world.

And so your point's a good one, Chris. Yes, I wouldn't fight you on that one. Okay, we have

Rory in Rybrook, New York, who wants to know, are dispensationalists typically two kingdom advocates?

Because I know most of them seem to be Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Reformed Baptists. And if not, why are they almost in the same frame of mind as the two kingdom advocates regarding those who are in Christian leadership not being politically involved?

It's a great, it's a great question. I got a lot of friends who are dispensationalists, and so I'm not picking on any, you know,

I think as a system, as a system, it tends to have these different dispensations, and they have their proper time in the history of redemption.

But there can be this kind of wedge driven between these dispensations throughout history, classic dispensations, dispensations would have seven dispensations or epochs.

Now, what that means is, if Levi and I as Baptists and Reformed and, say,

Progressive Covenant Enlist or whatever, we may not be theonomists like certain people are, but our system doesn't kind of force us to keep

God's law at bay, right? We're not systemically, there's no systemic theological pressure to keep the law out of the picture.

We are free to say, huh, what wisdom is there in the law that we can bring to bear on the of governance and what wisdom about punishments and what wisdom about justice can we bring to bear, not because we're under the covenant of the

Mosaic law, but it's nonetheless biblical wisdom that we can bring to bear. So I think probably systemically dispensationalists have less theological pressure to turn to the law, where people like Levi and I would be generally happy to look to God's law with all the necessary changes we'd make going across the covenant, but dispensationalists would be,

I'm generalizing here, have less theological, systemic pressure to look to that part of the canon, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I would say they're run -of -the -mill dispensationalists that I encounter, again, many friends, doesn't have a problem with political engagement.

But I would echo, like, I would have more problems generally with Reformed -ish

Baptists who are more too king to me on that or more pietistic, and just, like, touching that realm is dirty and we shouldn't.

Yeah, so I would say that the system of dispensationalism, though, does kind of set up what

Schaeffer would call an upper versus lower story kind of thing, that the church is kind of upper story,

Israel's kind of lower story. And that upper versus lower story manifests itself in many ways, including while the church is really only concerned with spiritual upper story things and not physical earthly lower story things, and that could contribute.

Yeah, good point. By the way, Levi, you might find this interesting. If you recall, last time when we had

Dr. Willem on, you were explaining why you are not, neither one of you are, theonomists or Christian nationalists.

And I said, although that is the case, I didn't hear anything that either of you said when we were nearing the end of the interview.

I didn't hear anything that either one of you said that would upset either one of those folks. In fact,

I was confident that both of those categories of Christians would be very enthusiastically in approval of what you were saying.

And what do you know? Yesterday, I was contacted by a theonomist in Roanoke, Virginia, who said, man, did

I love that interview you did with that Pastor Levi and Dr. Stephen Willem. They were phenomenal.

I got a lot of friends who are theonomists. I'm actually working my way through Joe Booth's book,

Mission of God. I think Joe gets a lot, a lot of things right, and I think he's closer to where I am than some others.

The differences are going to be how we get there, the emphasis on the covenant, or how the covenants work together, and emphasis more than that.

And Joe Booth has done wonderful work on this that I think we should point out here. Like, whether we want to admit it or not, we live in a theonomic legal system.

British common law was consciously built off of Deuteronomy and the Old Testament law, and then that's beyond debate.

We just are ignorant of it, and then that was brought over to the states, and as we've become less like that, we've become more unjust.

And I'd like you both, before we go to the final break, I'll start with Dr. Bradley Green, and then

I'll have you, Pastor Levi, chime in. What is the worst -case scenario of what you see occurring in the life of Christians and in the community and the nation that would occur by a rejection of the principles that you advocate in this program today and at the conference that you are promoting?

Those that would be your opponents on those issues, what is the greatest detriment that they will unconsciously help to usher in, if you will?

Wow, that's a big question. So I tend to be quasi -pessimistic short -term, optimistic long -term.

I think we could be in for a period of suffering or persecution, even martyrdom.

I don't speak that way flippantly, but you asked the question, what is the worst case? Certainly, the

U .S. is mired in wickedness. Wickedness is being celebrated. So I think we're living on fumes at this point, and the day of grace may be spent, who knows.

So judgment, and that could be persecution, that could be martyrdom.

So I guess that's the worst thing. This is a longer, I'm doing writing on this and always reading and writing on this stuff.

But I mean, that's the worst case, I would say. Levi, what do you think?

I think the worst case scenario, and I would need to flesh this out a little bit, is that we become Europe.

I think the worst case scenario is that we become fully apostatized as a people.

And I think Schaeffer's warning in the 60s, 70s, and 80s wasn't heeded.

And I think we're still on that. And I think others, I think Christ over all is carrying on this tradition. I think

Nancy Peercy is carrying on this tradition. Still sounding that gullihorn that if we are going to buy into this upper, lower story stuff, and if the church is going to view herself as we are not going to care about the world burning around us, if we are not going to care about what's going on around us because we only care about what is immaterial, which

I think is a distortion of the New Testament. Something's always going to fill that void in the lower story.

And that's where we've seen formerly trusted voices who have been parodying leftist talking points.

And that type of critical theory will eventually eat away at the Christian faith. And we'll have just our current denominations become mainline denominations.

And the society won't have a faithful Christian witness anymore. So for me, the worst case scenario is if the church seems indifferent to what's going on around it, refuses to offer the answers people are asking.

I'm like, we literally got public intellectuals flirting with cultural Christianity. There are people all throughout our society who are looking for answers that the church has.

And then we've got a Christian leader saying, we don't want to give the answer. And that boggles my mind.

It boggles my mind. The church has answers. They're time -tested answers. The fruit we can look back and see is positive.

And they come from God. And we can provide those answers to a needy generation. If we don't, I think the

Lord removes our lampstand. And this, like much of Europe, will be 2 % or less evangelical.

That's worst case scenario. And we have to go to our final break, so don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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We have Clarence in Hoboken, New Jersey, who says,

John Adams said our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other.

How can we as Christians continue to uphold the constitution with the high esteem that we do?

Oh, you're going to throw that on us with six minutes left, huh? Oh, that's a that's a big.

Well, we got we got more than that left. Actually, we've got about eight. OK, so well,

I guess I'd start with is what we got, right? It's it is the law. So we got to either change it or abide by it.

So the I think what I like about the constitution is it. It's made to restrict an unruly government.

It's failed in many ways, clearly. So that's something to take very, very seriously. But I'd rather be stuck with it than stuck with not having a constitution like some countries or having a much different different kind of constitution.

Long term, the answer has to be reformation and revival. It has to be transformed hearts and people living justly, loving justice and walking according to what is right and just and true.

So there's no short term solution short of. Well, there's no short term solution. Even a reformation revival almost assuredly would take a long time to work its way out in the culture.

Well, I'd like people to in faithful Christian schools. That's what we need. Amen. Hear, hear. Well, I'd like you both to summarize your thoughts on this with especially the nuts and bolts of how practically

Christians, in your opinion, need to respond to the information you're providing today. And let's start with Dr.

Bradley and then we'll have you, Pastor Levi conclude. And if we have any time for extra listener questions, we'll throw them in.

OK, yeah, so the short my short answer, I think, to that is.

My my talks will be. On two kingdoms, and I'll essentially suggest and suggest we try to do the hard work of working out how does

God and how do we submit all things to God and his word? That includes every sphere and every domain, as Kuyper and many others have have spoken about.

I think all this is very important as a matter of how we love God and how we love neighbor and the we simply don't have the option not to work out as Christians.

How do we as Christians think well and as Christians about the realm of politics?

Levi, I think we need to we need to.

Not be ashamed of Christ Lordship over all of life. I think we also need to not be ashamed of our

Christian heritage, not just as a nation, but as the church throughout the world and the salt and light impact that we've had for too long.

We've let a retelling of history make us think that Christian involvement in in the politics has been a net bad.

And the objective truth is if you believe in things like human rights, equal weights and measures, limited government.

Ending sex trade, ending slavery twice the Christian West did then.

Then our record, though not perfect, is better than any other option, and I think that's clear.

So I think we need to regain a confidence in that. And that as we then work out that Lordship of Christ, declaring his

Lordship, we then need to actively apply it like I like I just said, find biblically faithful churches who will speak the truth to you, even when it it's controversial or shocking.

Get your kids out of public school. As Votie Bauckham says, right, if you send them to Caesar, don't don't be surprised when they become

Romans. Get them in good Christian education however you can. I think churches need to turn their attention to helping equip parents and families in Christian schools, whether through funding or staffing or whatever.

The church used to view education as a part of its mission. I think we need to do so again. There's a real need for that.

And so look for ways to support those types of things. OK, we do have time for one last listener question.

We have Stiles in Wheatley Heights, Long Island, New York, who says

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is considered a hero to many, and he was actually involved in the assassination plot to murder

Adolf Hitler. Is this ever an appropriate action with Christians when it comes to a dictator who is slaughtering millions?

Wow, that's a big one. Yeah, in the Christian tradition, there has been a place for regicide. So the killing of a leader, it is by all means a last resort.

It is by all means something you do not rush into. And some of the crude jokes about, you know, next time don't miss with President Trump, of course, was quite shocking.

But it's not surprising when we're free floating without any meaningful ethical mourning, or at least much of the common culture is.

So if we're serious about submitting to scripture, then that is the kind of thing you would only do as as a radical last last resort.

Now, what do you think about Bonhoeffer? I'm not even sure how much he knew about the killing of innocents in Germany when he was involved in the plot.

Did he rush into that? Was it was it inappropriate? I'm not an expert on Bonhoeffer.

I think we I think as evangelicals, we should take Bonhoeffer with a grain of salt. He's a mixed bag theologically.

So neo -Orthodox. Well, yeah, at least. And so so we shouldn't just say he's a hero plain and simple.

He's a mixed bag, as any thinker is. But particularly Bonhoeffer is a particularly mixed mixed bag.

And and so we should be slow to praise him at every level. Certainly. Yeah, I don't know what he knew and didn't know when he when he initiated his assassination attempt.

But he was certainly certainly a better answer than the Lutherans that became Nazis. Yeah, definitely.

And he struggled with whether or not he was doing the right thing. So I would echo

Brad's comments, both theologically and practically. Is there a place for rebellion, just war or even regicide?

Yes. But it is it is always a measure of very, very last resort.

I think Nazi Germany would qualify for that. And very quickly, just to clarify, because some may have the wrong conclusion from a listener question where he was saying that predominantly two kingdom theology exists amongst

Presbyterians, Reformed Baptists and Lutherans. Well, amongst Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists, it is a very highly debated issue.

It's not that it's not that most Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists adhere to that. Would you agree?

I don't think two kingdoms is the default mode necessarily amongst

Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians. I think theologically, there's certainly more balance for it within Lutheranism, given

Luther's understanding. It wasn't as developed like Calvin's, I don't think, in terms of all things being under God in a certain way.

Luther, I think, had more space for these two, we might say radically separated realms or radically two separated realms.

So but I don't know that two kings is the default view. I think a more fuzzy pietism is kind of the default view amongst my people, probably, than two kingdoms.

Well, we're out of time right now. And don't forget that we are continuing this conversation next

Wednesday with Ardell Canaday, who will be our guest, along with Pastor Levi Secord.

And if you want more details on this conference that's coming up in September, go to christbible .net.

Christbible .net. Can you repeat the dates of that? It's September 20th and 21st. All righty.

Well, thank you so much, guys. You did a phenomenal job. I want to thank everybody who listened. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater